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American physicists plead for European lifeline

By
VINCENT KIERNAN in
WASHINGTON DC

High-energy physicists in the US have picked themselves up after the
decision to cancel the Superconducting Supercollider, and begun their campaign
for the next best thing – access to Europe’s planned giant accelerator,
the Large Hadron Collider. Last week, they warned Congress that unless the
US contributes to the new facility at CERN, the European centre for particle
physics near Geneva, high-energy physics in the US will die.

‘Without prompt and decisive attention to its longer term future, US
efforts in high-energy physics (will come) to an abrupt end,’ Roberto Peccei
of the University of California at Los Angeles told Congress’s science committee
last week. ‘To have a healthy programme in the far future, it is imperative
to find alternatives for pursuing some of the scientific goals which the
SSC would have made possible.’

Scientists appearing before the committee estimated that it would cost
the US between $500 million and $700 million to participate in the LHC.
According to John Peoples, director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
in Illinois, the US would probably have to pay $300 million towards the
cost of building the LHC, and another $200 million towards two detectors.

Frank Merritt, a physicist at the University of Chicago, estimates that
the US would also have to pay between $30 and $40 million a year towards
running costs.

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The US could contribute in kind, perhaps in the form of equipment already
built for the SSC. Earlier this month, a panel set up by the US National
Research Council suggested that CERN might be interested in the SSC’s superconducting
magnets and its computer centre.

Some members of Congress who helped to kill off the SSC say they are
receptive to the notion of funding the LHC. ‘Those of us who opposed the
SSC argued that physics facilities must become as international as the science,
and greater involvement with CERN would be a first step in acknowledging
these new conditions,’ said Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican who
helped lead the campaign to cancel the SSC.

Ironically, some members who supported the SSC have a more jaundiced
view of CERN and are unhappy that the focus is shifting towards Europe.
Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas, complained that no European nation
had contributed to the SSC. ‘I never saw one mark, one franc, one pound
come to this side of the ocean. It’s going to take a lot of convincing to
get me to invest in the second best.’

The Clinton administration is cagey about its plans. The President’s
science adviser, John Gibbons, says the administration wants to pursue the
idea of an international high-energy physics facility, and take a leading
role in it, but stressed that it need not be at CERN. Gibbons says no decision
on whether to embrace CERN will be made until the energy department’s physics
advisory panel makes its recommendations in the spring.

While physicists wait impatiently for a decision, the administration
is probably relieved that any attempt to win funds for the scheme can be
postponed until the 1996 budget comes around. The battle over the 1995 budget
is likely to be bruising enough without having to find extra money for an
overseas physics project, albeit a much cheaper option than the SSC.

The move to Switzerland may in the end be inevitable, says Merritt.
‘The LHC is the only viable candidate for international cooperation right
now.’